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My latest song. Yes, the video contains kittens.

Saudi Arabia won’t pay the U.S. back for fueling its warplanes as it bombed Yemen, but the U.S. recently resumed weapons sales to the kingdom.Last week, an investigation by The Intercept revealed that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stiffed the Defense Department on a bill for support of a Saudi-led war in Yemen that killed hundreds of thousands of people and sparked a humanitarian catastrophe. For months — up to and since publication — the Pentagon has ducked The Intercept’s requests for comment on the unpaid bill. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in a statement to The Intercept, excoriated...

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose sent the names of nearly 600 noncitizens who registered to vote to Attorney General Dave Yost for possible prosecution. Of those 597, LaRose says 138 appear to have voted in an election in Ohio when federal records showed they were not citizens. “I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country do not vote in our elections,” LaRose said. “The law requires me to refer these individuals to the attorney general, and that’s what we’re doing today.” LaRose launched an extensive citizenship verification audit of the state’s voting system...

Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the Vice-President. I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a free country. There's nothing that the government can do to me if I've broken no laws. My wealth was earned honestly, and an invitation to dinner with an American Vice-President is an honor. I checked my coat, was greeted by the Chief...

Iron deficiency (ID) is common in an American statewide health system, and the time to resolution is prolonged, according to a study. Jacob C. Cogan, M.D. and colleagues conducted a retrospective review of electronic medical record data from a Minnesota statewide health system and identified patients with ID (ferritin level ≤25 ng/mL). Participants had at least one follow-up ferritin level within three years. Resolved ID was classified as having a subsequent ferritin level ≥50 ng/mL. Data were included for 13,084 patients with ID between 2010 and 2020. The researchers found that 41.9% of patients had resolution within three years of...

A Dundalk restaurant visited by US President Joe Biden during his trip to Ireland last year has closed its doors. In a post on Facebook, McAteers The Food House said that it has ceased trading as of today. The business said that it was “impossible for us to continue trading”, and that, after a difficult few years, it had become “harder by the day to keep the ship afloat”. The restaurant cited numerous factors, including high costs, as being behind its decision. …

On Thursday night, following an evening that was cringier than a Zoom call with Jeffrey Toobin, Vice President Kamala Harris came on stage and actually spoke to a crowd of people. OK, they were friendly people who would never dream of fact-checking anything she says, no matter how ludicrous. But former President Donald Trump harbors no such reservations. While Harris was speaking, so was Trump, calling out her claims, point by point, on his Truth Social media platform. Here are some of the highlights. The former president asked one great question right away: In this question, I would caution Pres....

A physician scientist is making strides in understanding the molecular origins of fatty liver disease, a leading cause of liver failure. By identifying the critical role the urea cycle plays in its development, his findings could pave the way for new medications to treat this currently incurable disease. In a study, Brian DeBosch, MD, Ph.D., uncovered a critical link between defects in the urea cycle, a key process in detoxifying ammonia in the body, and the development of fatty liver disease. The study found that these urea cycle defects lead to secondary impairment in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, a...

Participants on a self-directed dietary education program who had the greatest success at losing weight across a 25-month period consumed greater amounts of protein and fiber, a study found. Personalization and flexibility also were key in creating plans that dieters could adhere to over time. At the one-year mark, successful dieters (41% of participants) had lost 12.9% of their body weight, compared with the remainder of the study sample, who lost slightly more than 2% of their starting weight, according to a study. The dieters were participants in the Individualized Diet Improvement Program, said Manabu T. Nakamura. "The iDip approach...

After not adding any new members for 13 years, the non-Western international group welcomed Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates last August. The floodgates have since been opened: In February, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor claimed that over 30 nations now want to join the international group. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been vocal about wanting to join the bloc, lobbying Russian, Chinese, and just this week, Indian officials about Malaysia’s application. Thailand also submitted a formal application to join the bloc last June, and officials hope that the Southeast Asian country will be...

Richard Goldberg @rich_goldberg · Shocking to no one who knows history

Liquor exports are on a high, led by a 26 percent rise in whiskey shipments in the first half of 2024, complementing the strong performance of Indian-made smartphones and electronics. A Moneycontrol analysis of commerce ministry data shows that India shipped spirits worth $78.5 million in the first six months of 2024. Blended whiskey, which accounts for half of the total whiskey exports, jumped 37 percent, and exporters are now aiming to grow the market for Indian-made single malt. Premium whiskey exports almost doubled to $6.3 million in the six months to June 30 from a year earlier.

A Democratic governor suggested on Tuesday that Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) should be made to “go through” having a member of his family raped. Hadley Duvall, a rape victim-turned-abortion activist, introduced the governor of her home state of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, at the Democratic National Convention on Monday afternoon, hailing the pro-abortion governor as a “champion for women.” Taking the stage, Beshear boasted of abortion-on-demand as a necessary option for women impregnated by rape. “Yet Donald Trump brags about tearing a constitutional right away from Hadley and every other woman and girl in our country,” the governor said. He continued,...

When Joe Biden was elected in 2020, an overjoyed Los Angeles Times boasted that his goal was to “make America California again.” Biden has fulfilled the Times’s vision, if with less than complete success.Over the past few weeks, however, lunchbucket Joe from Scranton has been unceremoniously dumped by the Golden State elite — Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, George Clooney and a passel of tech oligarchs — to be replaced with one of their own, Vice President Kamala Harris. But given the chances of a GOP win this year, the Californians have another favorite in the wings, Governor Gavin…When Joe Biden...

In Bob Dylan’s criminally overlooked 2003 cinematic masterpiece, “Masked and Anonymous,” a newspaper editor tells a reporter: “I will tell you this, there is a story there… Make something out of it. And if you can't do that, sir, then — make it up!” It’s advice that actual journalists today all too often follow. Sometimes, however, they get caught, as PBS just was. Rick laid out all the ugly details here.What is noteworthy is that PBS was clearly caught out because it thought it had a sensational story, one so useful to the leftist cause that it just had to...

Betelgeuse is our next door supergiant. It is almost 1000 times bigger than our sun and possibly it has already exploded in a giant supernova. How would we notice, how fast would the process be and what could we expect to see from Earth? Something happened in 2019 Betelgeuse is currently in the final stages of its short life. So when the red supergiant abruptly darkened in late 2019, the behavior led many to speculate that it might be about to explode. The loss of brightness was far greater than anything previously recorded. Analyzing data from Hubble Space Telescope and...

In 2023, sales of electric vehicles (EVs) passed the 1.6 million mark.To visualize where EVs are the most popular, Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti maps the number of registered EVs per 100,000 people by state as of June 2024.The vehicle registration data is sourced from the U.S. Department of Energy, while population data is from the U.S. Census Bureau.Only all-electric vehicles are included on the map.California Leads EV AdoptionCalifornia has the highest number of electric vehicles, with 1.1 million. Florida follows with 231,000 EVs, and Texas ranks third with 210,000.When considering EVs per 100,000 people, California also leads with 3,026 cars...

Fast-food restaurants survive by providing affordable, quick, and convenient meals, but cost inflation is now pushing their business models to the brink.It has become more expensive to eat out over the past five years, with food away from home increasing by 30 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In just the past year, the cost of eating at a fast-food restaurant has increased by more than that of a full-service restaurant.Within the consumer price index, the limited-service meals category (food that is ordered at a counter and taken to go) rose by 4.3 percent year over year in...

This just in: Jeff Bezos is a hypocritical gasbag. But then, I think we all knew that already.Bezos, co-founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, likes to wag his finger at us about carbon footprints. He's even met with the Pope to talk about carbon footprints. (I'll bet the Pope's carbon footprint is substantial.) But Jeff Bezos is also firmly in the "do as I say, not as I do" camp in his personal life. Example: On Thursday we learned that Bezos just shelled out $80 million for a Gulfstream G700, that being one of Gulfstream Aerospace's premiere...

She’s talking about how great San Francisco was before she destroyed it, probably not a good idea!